Toronto Photography Meetup Group

and LR does allow you to fix horizon (probably all imaging software do).
Not sure if DPP can take Nikon files, we one photographer using Canon and another on Nikon in the same wedding and LR handle both.

Louie

Actually, with today's digital cameras (high iso capability, low noise) I would say digital is a lot more forgiving and flexible when compared to film, especially when shooting in raw.

Except for over-exposure. You can easily over-expose colour-neg film by 3 or 4 stops and still not blow the highlights. However, under-expose it, and it looks like crap.

Ah, good to know.

You cannot rotate / correct for horizons in DPP - it just doesn't have that functionality - and probably the most requested one. If they had that - it would do 95% of what I need.

The new version of DPP (3.8.0) supports angle adjustment now.

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/contr ... elid=14999

Great News now that DDP does angle adjustment! Tried it out for a bit.. makes my work flow much easier for certain things.

Finally Canon listens!

No kidding! Don't know why this wasn't an option from the start. What? Canon expects everyone to shoot perfectly horizontal? lol

Great info everyone!!
(yes even you Metrix, I love it when you're helpful )
The links to the canon videos are tremendously helpful. The news that I can update DPP and correct horizon is also valuable.

I do see that RAW is more forgiving than film, what I meant was that as digital is completely new to me I expected it to be even more forgiving - blame it on bad CSI episodes where they seem to work miracles with crap digital files

I as well came into digital under the impression that current sensors had surpassed film for dynamic range, so you're not alone. Not sure where I got that "info" but I sure did believe it.

That's funny. I always get a hoot out of watching what they do with their digital files on CSI. And how they take some of the crime scene shots inches away using non-macro lenses and no diffusers on the flash.

It always amazes me why they never turn on the lights when searching a crime scene for evidence/clues.

So it is better to under-expose than over-expose with digital (assuming one were not able to expose properly?

Yes.

That's contradictory to what I've heard about exposing to the left of the meter, or HAMSTTR. Exposing to the right allows the censor to capture more data and as long as you don't blow the highlights, or any channel, it can all be brought back down to reasonable in post. I've also been told that when underexposed digital censors produce more noise than they do when over-exposed, again assuming highlights have not been blown.

In this instance "over-exposed" is being used synonymously with "blowing highlights".

I disagree. You need to bias your shots towards overexposure. This means looking at your histogram and making sure that "hill" (well a typical histogram to serve my point) is more towards the right without clipping the highlights.

That's what I do. I find underexposed images have way too much noise to be salvageable.

I agree - expose to the right as far as possible without clipping the highlights.

Perhaps Wendy was refering to under and/or overexposure by one or 2 f-stops rather than histogram clipping?

When the histogram clips and all the white parts of the pic flash red on my LCD, I cry and scurry back to my Holga/Spotmatic/Rolleicord.

I lean towards underexposure if the highlights are important, like a wedding dress or white plumage on a bird.

If the majority of the subject is dark or there are significant shadows, I expose to the right, over-expose by a stop or so, and then pull it back when converting and/or "shadows and highlights" tool in PS.

Most of the time, I try to expose correctly, so under and over exposure are just some of the methods to achieve that.

I agree but in addition you need to use the seperate rgb colour channel histogram as the grey scale histogram might show good but a colour channel might be blown. Bright or saturated colours are of a particular problem for digital sensors.

After all this talk (as you are talking a few stops here), Fionah is more confused then ever and nobody really answered her question.

I guess the answer is - try to get it as close to proper exposure (as you see it) as possible (either a little over or under is okay) as RAW is a little forgiving.

Basically correct except unfortunately any over exposure is not saved by using RAW. Some programs such as Lightroom can fill in the over exposed areas by making guesses based on the surrounding area but these are only approximations as the real detail has been lost. Best not to overexpose the subject while as you say some under exposure is forgiven.

My understanding was that RAW converters do a great job of saving over-exposure (and that this is desirable) but only if the highlights are not blown. That was the whole reason for the 'shoot ot the right' mantra. ACR/LR only 'guesses' blown highlight values in situations where the highlights are blown and then only when there is clipping in 1 or 2 of the RGB channels. it does this when using the 'highlight' slider and does the guesswork when 1 or 2 of the RGB channels are blown.

It is desirable to expose to the right if shooting RAW. Most of the information is on the right side. Desired because it results in less noise in dark areas and fuller use of the colour spectrum. However once highlights are blown, information is lost, Sometimes the lost information can be inferred/guessed by ACR/LR but only if there is some information - i.e. one channel that ISN'T blown.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutor ... ight.shtml
I believe that is the link to the origins of the theory.

Very detailed explanation. Thanks!!

Sorry fionah - let me know if this has prompted you to sell the G11 and go back to film. I could use a lighter smaller camera that shoots RAW

If I read everything correctly, if over-exposure means "blown-highlights" or "channel(s) clipping", that is a no-no in digital. And shoots to the right of the histogram without major channel(s) clipping is the proper exposure.

But the fact the OP is using a G10/G11 shooting RAW, has anyone tested the highlight headroom using any RAW converter? Would the sensor size makes any different? I always thought smaller sensor has a smaller dynamic range, could it affect the ability to recover highlights or the RAW converter's ability to guess what was supposed to be there?

For me I use "over-exposed" as exposed to the right of centre and "blown" for uh blown. I try to, or I mean to when I think of it, get as much area under the curve in the histogram as far to the right as possible without hitting the right edge, when it makes sense for the shot of course.

Not everyone has the same definition of overexposure. Mine is it is overexposed when one or more of the channels are clipping anything less is not overexposing regardless of whether or not it looks too bright or washed out you can fix it when you get it into your computer. So by my definition overexposure results in colour clipping or blown highlights. Shoot a bright red dress on a sunny day and overexposure will in most cases result in lost of detail in the red dress it may also result in blown highlights.

By my definition shooting to the right of centre is normal exposure. To the left may be underexposed again the subject versus background has to be taken into account.

If you are shooting at low ISO then you can be conservative and under expose by about a half stop and still get good shadow detail. For my camera i usually compensate the exposure by 1/3 stop unless the subject is much darker or brighter then the background. If you are shooting at higher ISO then the shadow detail starts to get noisy and you might want to shoot closer to the right side of the histogram again depending on the subject.

+1